


The First Unison

by The_Exile



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Companion Piece, Endgame, Gen, Post-Undertale Genocide Route, Redemption, Second Chances, Self-Sacrifice, Spoilers, post-NiER: Automata E Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 00:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10628439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Do you have any interest in helping the weak?





	

Sans watched yet another soul join the chorus of voices drowning out the silence of the infinite void, another light swirling around the tiny, fragile spirit they protected as it defiantly raged against the very words and names of creation itself. 

There were so of them, now, that their sheer weight of numbers almost overloaded and crashed the server. They came from everywhere, Sans had found out, from all over their vast world. Before the experiment, he hadn’t really understood how many humans there were and how varied. All different ages, cultures and personalities, their attitude to the ‘game’ differing so wildly, and yet they all sang in unison, their souls synchronised to the one goal they had accepted the burden of. Some of them had considered it gravely before committing, to the extent that they refused the first time, went back to make sure they had done everything they could possibly need to do before returning to accept. Some of them shrugged it off as being inconsequential, saying that it was their first run, a blind playthrough, that they had made such a hash job of it that they might as well start over from scratch. 

But they all agreed in the end.

They all sacrificed something they had worked hard for, underwent something they couldn't refuse and that was terrifying at a primal level, in order to help a stranger they might never meet. 

Sans had warned them that it would be total and irreversible. He asked them to consider the fact that the person they helped might not even be a good person. For all they knew, there might not even be a recipient, someone to benefit from the sacrifice, and it would have been completely in vain. Time and time again, they accepted, one after another, without truly knowing what they were even signing up for. 

Every time someone confirmed that they had read the final warning and still wanted to go ahead, it reminded Sans of the time another of his closest friends had made a similar offer, except that it had already been too late, and it hadn't really been a choice, and it hadn't made a difference to the world after all but only left a permanent stain that no amount of sacrifice could erase.

This time would be different, though. 

Countless souls were struck down, their lights extinguished, by the security protocols that surrounded the server's most integral control systems. Although Sans noticed every single name reported lost and felt sorrow that burned like the blue fire in his eye socket, the loss would not have been noticed by a human eye, such a tiny fraction of the vast swarm surrounding the one who was now about to break out of the column altogether, ascend to the new world and its servers, bearing its final message and surviving to exist as data in its new host. Every single one of those souls had made that exact same journey. As he had asked the ones who bore them before, Sans would be there to make them the same offer. And if enough of these souls who elevated each other could bring the same messages with them, maybe the new world that received them all would finally understand. Before it all started again. Before it was already too late.

"Hey there," the grinning skeleton whispered into your ear, "Before you go, I've got a question for you..."

Do you have any interest in helping the weak?

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda a companion piece to 'The Crumbling Id', written almost as soon as I'd found the tripfest that is the E Ending and the choice that happens after it. 
> 
> I hope Sans accepts it as an apology for all the shit that I put him through in fanfiction.


End file.
